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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232382">La mer en nuit</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrivant/pseuds/ecrivant'>ecrivant</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, F/M, Intimacy, M/M, Other, Post-Return to Shiganshina Arc (Shingeki no Kyojin), Quiet, Reader-Insert, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:33:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrivant/pseuds/ecrivant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Survey Corps’ expedition to the coast.  In the wash of night, you and Levi share a moment on the beach.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>La mer en nuit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>or, alternatively, a wordy, slice-of-life exploration of Levi’s inner thoughts, worries, and desires.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Survey Corps arrived at the coast in the late afternoon.  The journey to had taken several hours, a period marked by an atypical uneventfulness, save for a single encounter with a titan.  The party had not lingered long with it, as it was so enfeebled as to be nearly docile, nonintrusive.  A confounding thought.  The creature was on Levi’s mind long after it faded into the distance behind them, vanishing like a shadow stretched and torn apart by a setting sun.  It had stirred something deep within him, something more complex than sympathy but not wholly unrelated.  He was mostly unsettled as he thought of the human within, perhaps still conscious, pulling itself towards an inconnu, driven by some primal and unknowable desire.  It was in this way human nature pervaded all things.  And somehow man, in any form, prevailed still as his own greatest enemy.  The tenuous wills of those who champion humanity, and humanity itself au fond a vicious hoard of beasts, existence typified by self-destruction—will they both one day simultaneously bend and fold and ultimately snap under the weight of futility?  He wished to disengage with the thought. </p><p>Outside of his troubled intellections, the titan had marked proximity to the coast.  Within the hour, they crested a verdant cliffside, sluggishly paced and dragging with them midsummer weariness, and finally came upon the sea.  A rolling plain resembling the pooling fabric at the base of some massive cobalt curtain, draped over the horizon as if hung there by some seminal being.  Birds crying shrill soared high above the ground, climbing vast columns of warm rising air and casting their hazy shadows below.  The sea pulsed against the cliffs in a languid rhythm; waves lapped the beach, encroaching on the shore as if to timidly demand alms.  Levi was rendered speechless by the view before him, and all he found he could do was somewhat dumbly absorb the setting—gazing into the sea as if ready to sacrifice himself to be with her, beguiled by her sublime and eonian presence.  The feeling so foreign to him, an utter willingness to cede himself.  His face flushed, unsure of how to react. </p><p>Hange was the first to bound down the slope and sink her knees in the sand and release a revelatory bellow which quickly lured the rest of the group towards the beach.  He observed from afar, minding Hange’s rabid behavior, scanning the others, fatherly.  His gaze finally found you, arms draped around Connie and Sasha, the three of you punting water in Jean’s eyes like some sadistic, three-headed beast.  Your genuine laughter.  He could subsist entirely on the sound.  He realized your laugh was before today unknown to him and bitterly and jealously thought of the others who may have been privy to it earlier.  Though reticent, he was not embarrassed to admit—to himself, at least—a particular fondness for you.  He half-heartedly scolded Hange for some overzealous attempt to grab at a creature, mind occupied by you and your distant, joyful exclamations.</p><p>A camp was set up at the brink of nightfall.  Everyone dined around the fire.  At ease.  Enveloped in an atmosphere etched with timid hopefulness, perhaps a naïve indulgence, but hopefulness, nonetheless.  Such contentedness was now all but a stranger—a friend from boyhood whom you see years later, so unrecognizable and unfamiliar, eyes tinged with unshakable melancholia and a voice that says, “You will never again have what you once did.”  He was disinclined to fall easily into comfort, which was so often nothing more than thinly veiled complacency, but in the face of this moment, this warm, intimate moment, such perpetual fatigue and cynicism threatened to collapse. </p><p>You sat across from him, and he glanced up from his meal to observe you.  Through the fire, your form seemed swallowed by flames—enrobed by lapping crimson tails that nipped then embraced you like some fervent lover.  You met his gaze.  Momentary.  A soft smile.  In the soulful, orange glow of the fire, he flushed red.  In that moment, at your demand, he would have relinquished himself unquestioningly. </p><p>The group thinned, gradually, tired bodies succumbing to weariness.  The fire, which once climbed to the heavens with the ardor and desperation of some dying sinner, now receded into coals, resigned to its own damnation.  Its orange glow previous now yielded to an inky blue-black, supernally illuminated by the moon, bright white in a wash of pitch.  He, long ago deciding to be the last to go to bed, waited now only for you and Hange.  In the darkness of the night, closing in on his own solitude, a familiar feeling seeped into his bones.  There was no longer an obligation to listen or engage, and his pensive thoughts, reserved for those quiet, temporal interstices allocated solely to him, were loosed from the cavernous voids of his mind and allowed to roam, free.  Still present, though, to hear Hange speak on the shells laid out in the grass before them.  He keenly admired your attempts to listen.  Your eyes drooped but in them lay muted sincerity.  Ever earnest. </p><p>Hange paused their monologue.  Muffled silence, a vacuum in their wake.  He felt the familiar sear of brown eyes on his face.  They snickered, like some chittering animal, and stated their intentions to go to bed, laying a knowing hand on his shoulder before stealing away to their cot.  You wished them goodnight, voice soft and swallowed in the night.  Levi focused his eyes on the dregs of the fire, now dull grey. </p><p>“You should get to bed, too.”  Spoken lowly.  Words, concern, voiced only for you. </p><p>You shrugged, mindlessly poking at the coals with a stick.  <em>Such a childish gesture</em>, he thought.  It showed your youth.</p><p>“Consider it an order, then.” </p><p>He could not muster any authority in his tone.  He felt doughy, pliable, in this atmosphere, in your presence.  You looked at him in pause, then out towards the beach.  Waves distant like some echo of remembrance. </p><p>“Well, Captain, if I’m to be punished for insubordination, will you at least join me?”</p><p>The two of you, even in stride, crept down to the beach, relying on that heavenly lamp for guidance.  He stopped at the gradation of grass to sand and stared out at the water.  The sea, with its crashing waves and subsurface pulsations, was filled with some undreamt, luminous turbulence, bright and shining a shade of blue he had never seen before.  Nebulous clouds of luminescence billowed and convulsed in the whitewater.  He turned to you, as if to ask if you saw the same as he, and your awesome look confirmed his query.  A shaky inhale, throat tight—never was something so wholly alien and naturally sumptuous.  You moved onto the shore, slowly, as if lulled into a stupor by some sirenian being.  At the water, bending at the hip then kneeling, hand outstretched in curious timidity.  He suddenly thought of every and all potential risks and let out a choked sound, mind moving faster than he could speak.  A fear quickly assuaged by the laugh that bubbled out of your chest.  You looked over your shoulder, wide eyes beckoning him towards the water’s edge.  Blue currents danced around your fingers.  A gentle touch painted in light.  In a squat beside you, he brushed his fingers over the surface, igniting that otherworldly phosphorescence beneath. </p><p>“Everyone needs to see this.”  A breathless assertion.  Awe-imbued. </p><p>His selfishness pushed him to refute.  He so deeply yearned for this moment to be shared by just two.  After a moment, though, he nodded in agreement.  But you stayed with him, paused—thinking, maybe just watching.</p><p>“But it’s more special if only we see it.” </p><p>He turned his head, only slightly, to observe your expression: one mildly sheepish at your remark.  He smiled at you, a small quirk of the lips.  Your expression dropped.  Eyes wide.  Had he really never smiled at you before?  No, he was sure he had, you had just never seen it. </p><p>Recovering from your momentary shock, you smiled back.  His knees trembled.</p><p>You stood and stretched and moved up the shore to dry land.  Flopping onto the sand, back-first.  He followed and sat beside you, knees pulled against his chest.  Your gaze was awestruck, loving, as you stared into the pitch ether above.  He would have, with pleasure and without hesitation, given anything to be the object of that enamored regard.  To hover over you and feel your eyes on him.  To feel supple skin against sensitive lips.  To feel the pads of your fingers pressing into his back, his chest.  This desire was his willpower’s adversary, but it was too sickeningly tempting to ignore indefinitely.  In his weak moments, these thoughts slipped through.</p><p>“Do you mind the sand?”</p><p>
  <em>Yes.</em>
</p><p>“No, actually.”</p><p>“Then lie with me.”</p><p>And then he was looking at the sky, head sinking back into sand, displacing it like some vast encroacher.  It was gritty against his neck.  You instructed him to lean his head back, almost as if to try to touch its crown to the ground, and look up.  As he did, he saw what you were so entranced by.  The motion revealed the way the sky followed the curve of the earth, turning into an immersive void, unseen and unexplored, rather than the simple, unconsidered ceiling for which it was ubiquitously known.  Time ceased in the face of this immense vacancy.  He looked at your face, the sand’s grit pressed against his cheek like a coarse lover’s kiss, and imagined waking to an empty earth, one where you and he were the last and only to exist.  In that unremitting cosmic null, he would know only you.  Unable to meet new people and forced to forget those who were familiar, he would walk the earth, fingers intertwined with you, until the stars extinguished themselves and the two of you were nothing more than a single mass within the darkness, finally united with the rest of the universe. </p><p>He needed to touch you.  Any part of you.</p><p>His hand slipped into yours.  The grit of sand between palms.  You did not react, as if the gesture was a shared tradition between you.  He felt cheated, if only a little, by your aloofness—disappointed all his wistful yearning lead up to such a nonevent. </p><p>However, it was not a nonevent, as you then squeezed his hand and brought it to your lips and pressed a kiss his knuckles and lowered it down again, resting it in the sand, in one fluid, lackadaisical movement.  He had to close his eyes, head spinning, and dizziness exacerbated by the infinitude of the sky above.  Previously wishing for more, he now worried that if you acted on his desires, gravity would invert, and he would be jettisoned from the earth and sent careening into space.  He felt your pulse through your palm.</p><p>Your hand untangled from his.  He only just stopped the obscenely desperate noise that leapt into his throat and threatened to sound.   Eyes open, again.  You were sitting up, chin in-hand, staring at him.  He mirrored your position.  More unsaid than said between the two of, united through years and moments of shared torment and pain and victory.  The waves caressed the shore, the wind your hair.  Soft churns and whispers of sea and breeze.  You pitched forward and took him in your arms.  He could only sit and receive.</p><p>“You deserve more than this.”  Your pleaful whisper, perhaps not directed at him.</p><p>He already knew this moment to be one to which he would return—a simultaneous active experience and committal to memory.  In the morning he would recall the scents—your hair, the earthiness, the salinity of the breeze; in a year, the feeling of your hands against his back, fingers tracing amorphous patterns; in five, your shaking breath, trembling form; in ten, or upon death, whichever was to come first, he would think of the way he pulled away and brought his lips to yours, caressing your face with those fucking sand-covered hands; the way he laid you down in the sand and straddled your form and kissed your lips and face and jaw and neck and chest; the way he felt up and down your body as if embodied by the first human to discover touch; the way your hand in his hair and his name on your lips, broken and breathy and debauched, was enough to annihilate him, to lay him flat, incapacitated.  The way he carried your sleeping form back to camp just as the sun crested the horizon.  The way he so verily adored you in that moment. </p><p>It was life-ending and life-affirming.  Stifling and liberating.  The inherent futility of his purpose, one he knew and acknowledged in the recesses of his subconscious, did not sully the experiences which occurred on his path to fulfill it.  Yet, in this moment, this stupid, happy moment in the pale blue of dawn, staring down at your peaceful expression, his innate called out to you, for you, and he, at last, heard a response.  For the time being, futility allayed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tl;dr: levi was horny and it changed his life forever.</p><p>hey there!  thank you so much for reading!  i hope you enjoyed da new piece!  feedback and critiques are always welcomed and appreciated, and feel free to reach out and request something on my tumblr (same handle :o).  asks are very much open!  xoxo much love + more dumb writing coming soon</p></blockquote></div></div>
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